The Warrior in Me
by Mourneloupe
Summary: While he watched the procession, he couldn't imagine never again seeing her smile. It's only a matter of time though, he knows. he knows she will come back to him. SK OneShot


They walked her up the long winding pathway single file.

Their Destination? The guillotine.

He remembered her face clearly, so wicked in it's hatred for every living thing in that moment. Her brilliant white hair once so healthy and well kept was mutilated and short, matted with filth. He saw her eyes were no longer that once beautiful azure he cherished. Now they burned like two coals in a fire pit. Red as blood those eyes of hers were, with murky slitted pupils. He remembered thinking that it was the end of her, when her blood reigned and took over her human side. Her youkai blood had fully won out, though she kept those two wolfish ears of hers on her head in the place where regular humanoid ears would be situated. He had come to admire and adore those ears of hers. However, she was no longer the Kagome he had known so well, for so long. She was something far more dangerous and dark. A being not to be taken lightly. A spirit that had been shattered too many times and was now about to break free in one last glorious battle. A being whom he had shattered enough times to know first hand.

He watched her being led up the steps of the blade tower and thought of how pathetic it was to watch such a regal youkai, though hanyou she may have been born, but no longer, being led to such a demeaning and _human_ punishment. The word rolled off of his tongue like a sickeningly sweet vomit. How he detested the word yet surrounded himself in it daily. All because of Kagome...

As he sat in his personal study in the candle light of his home, he remembered how he had hidden in the shadows of his carriage that brisk autumn morning, thinking how much Kagome loved the fall and that if she were to die it was right to be the first day of autumn. His consort had sat across from him fanning herself and giggling stupidly. Her bright glassy eyes flickered untrustingly, all around her. A true daughter of his father's noble court, he had sneered to himself. Thinking that, he felt a strange tightening behind his eyes as he thought of Kagome sitting in the same spot not weeks earlier, at one point in their lives, laughing as his consort did now, without a care in the world. In those beautiful taffeta and egyptian silk gowns he had purchased for her and her soft lilting voice filling him with such peace. He could listen to her talk endlessly and never tire of its harmonious symphony.

The music in the streets had blared out around his coach distractedly as he watched the executioner take the chains of his best friend's hands and march her in a stoic manner, up to the kneeling place. The axeman shoved her unceremoniously down to her knees the black hood covering the pleasure he felt in that moment. In his coach Sesshomaru heard her grunt in pain from where he sat. His stomach tightened even more. This was wrong and there was nothing he could do.

Her face had glowed with such a healthy rage in that moment when her neck pressed into the soft tanned leather of the guillotine bench. He knew in the seconds following the blade's decent onto his beautiful Kagome's slender neck that he would never see her smile again in his long years to come, and that it was all his fault. He could not have stopped it from happening...not with his King and Lord sitting right beside him...watching him, daring him to breathe wrongly upon the ground or event taking place before him.

He would not cry he had sworn, not for her, Kagome. She would not have it, the last time they had spoken, she had been merely a whisper of what she had once been. She had said to him the gloom of his Lord's dungeons  
"Sess, when it happens. It'll be fast. You and me...we've had some times together no?" She had smiled so softly up at him."Yes, we have Kag." He could barely look at her.  
"Don't worry so much Sesshomaru. One day, you'll see...one day that bastard will die, and you? You'll be right next to me when I make my return right?" She looked so hopeful.  
"I promise, no tears shall fall for you. I will make it so. It is all I can do now anyway." He was trapped and they both knew it.  
"It's alright. We were careful, kept our heads down, wits up. We coulda made it big you and I. It'll happen. It's fated isn't it Sess?"  
She was falling asleep he could tell by the dullness of her voice, the evening of her breath.  
"Yeah Kagome, you and I, we would of touched stars together." He whispered and ran one last clawed hand through her knotty and butchered hair.

Her skin was still so soft to his fingertips. A small child could not even compare to the face she had made right then when he kissed her upon the forehead and helped lay her down beneath a stolen blanket he had taken for her. It was her last night with him. He stretched his arms through the bars of the cell and hugged her entire frame against the steel and his chest. Her warmth seemed to seep into him. He felt her presence. Even then when she had emerged in chains from the palace gates. It had been a blow, but with the feel of her beating heart still upon his breast, he had been able to withstand it. She had once again been his saving grace.

He knew remembering her now, while he wasted away in a private study in a privately owned home that would just change every three decades or so, was all he could grant in a manner of wishes to her. A wish of her return. A death not deserving of the surreal creature up on the podium that morning. His warrior would return to him.

and there would be hell to pay for their enemies when she did. He smiled in the candlelight of his room. Oh yes, such wrath would be unleashed upon all of them.

All of them.


End file.
